The highly anticipated 30th William Jones Cup International Basketball Tournament will commence at the Taipei County Sinjhuang Gymnasium today with Team Kazakhstan taking on Australia at 1:30pm today.
The annual mid-summer basketball classic that began in Taipei 29 years ago will have Team Taiwan hosting seven other squads from around the world in the nine-day competition that will attract basketball fans all around the island to cheer on the home team.
In addition to Kazakhstan and Australia, this year’s tournament will also include teams from Egypt, Qatar, the US, South Korea, and the defending champs from Jordan to take part in a seven-game, round-robin format, before the top four finishers will play in the semi-finals to qualify for the title game on the final day of competition.
Seeking to improve upon its seventh-place finish of a year ago will be a Taiwanese squad that features a group of up-and-coming stars from the Super Basketball League, lead by veterans Yang Tseh-yi and Lee Chi-yi of the Yulon Dinos under Head Coach Chung Kwang-Suk of South Korea. The top players of the SBL that usually suit up for the competition every year have all been sidelined due to injuries, most notably Taiwan Beer’s Lin “the Beast” Chih-jeh, three-time MVP winner Tien Lei (Dacin Tigers), and Yulon Dinos greats Chen “Airman” Hsin-an and Tseng Wen-ding.
Standing in Taiwan’s way in its quest for the title this year are a tough American team from the evangelical organization Athletes in Action, led by skipper David Bliss (former coach of Baylor University) with a crew of mostly Division I college players from the NCAA, a strong Qatar national squad that is under the direction of head coach Kent Davison, and the defending champs from Jordan under the direction of Coach Mario Palma who surprised everyone last year by stealing the show with a tournament-best 7-2 mark in the ten-team round-robin play.
Australia and South Korea will not have their national team playing in this year’s competition as the former opted to send its national youth squad (19-and-under) to help prepare it for the upcoming Oceana Championship in August while the latter sends in a group of college all-stars in place of the national team which is heading to Athens for the Olympics Qualifying Tournament beginning next Monday.
“I know the injuries to some of our top guys have hurt us both in term of size and speed, but we will surprise a lot of the doubters this year with our perimeter game,” Lee Chih-yi said at the pre-tournament press conference in Taipei yesterday afternoon.
Lee and the rest of the Taiwan nationals will have a chance to avenge last year’s embarrassing 82-59 loss against South tonight when they open the tournament with a tough match against their South Korean counterparts (7:30pm game time).
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